Dark Side
by EmeraldGrey22
Summary: Nico knew that secrets were meant to be revealed. When his own secrets gets out, he finds himself being comforted by the most unlikely person imaginable. Nico-Annabeth friendship. Spoilers for HoH.


**Hello! Just finished reading HoH and...wow. Just speechless. All the Percabeth just killed me *_* Anyway this was something that came to me almost immediately afterwards so yeah...**

**Rant: The reaction the Nico revelation got from the fandom was majorly disappointing for me. I fell even more in love with this character but but some people were not all too keen with the idea. I feel like some of the people in this fandom have made Nico to be something he's not- like a cool emo badass who doesn't give a damn and is happy-go-lucky sixteen to seventeen year old, best friends with Percy and Thalia and what not... I think everybody needed a good reminder that Nico was a quiet fourteen year old boy who kept mostly to himself and brooded in the underworld. This was RR reminding us who Nico really is and I frankly love this Nico more than anything everybody has made him out to be. Rant over! **

**Sorry :D Needed to get that out of my head c:**

**Cover belongs to the fabulous Viria! I will never get tired of your art! **

**Disclaimer: I have yet to achieve a masters in trolling so for now I shall be a regular fanfiction writer.**

* * *

_Everybody's got a dark side, do you love me?_

_Can you love mine?_

_Nobody's picture perfect_

_But we're worth, you know that we're worth it_

* * *

He angrily wiped the wetness from his eyes with an arm and blinked furiously against the tears that were threatening to reshow. He slowed his sprint and looked around to see where his feet had managed to carry him. The Pegasus stables were probably the last place he expected but that was all the more fine with him. He inspected the area and then took a seat near the wide glass doors built into the floor of the room. He watched the ruins of an old abandoned city rush past underneath him in a wild frenzy of color and for a moment he tried desperately to rid himself of the constant burden of shame that he carried perpetually atop his shoulders.

He knew that it would get out eventually. He knew that secrets were meant to be revealed. But that didn't necessarily entail that his heart was going to get shattered in the process. He closed his eyes and clenched his fists but he could see their faces clearly against the black of his eyelids, loud, sharp and as vivid as a picture. When he opened his eyes, the faces didn't vanish but instead flashed in front of his face, like a vision that was playing itself repeatedly on the surface of the glass doors upon which he sat. He didn't know where he had gotten the courage to face their looks but somehow he had. Jason had looked empathetic regarding his situation, since he already knew. Piper looked at him with pity in her kaleidoscope eyes. He had wanted to shout at her; he had carried enough self-pity over the years to make up for the whole crew of the _Argo II_. He didn't need it anymore, not from her anyway. Frank and Leo looked shocked, pretending to discreetly hide their discomfort.

Hazel had looked scandalized. He pretended that his heart hadn't broken when he saw her expression. He knew that she was from an older time and was going to need some time to get over the idea but the thought hadn't prevented the piercing pain that was splitting through his chest. She was probably going to be the first person to get over it, the first person to come to him and tell him that it was okay, the only person he'd ever want to see again but her face at the moment was one he knew he was never going to forget. _Bianca wouldn't have reacted like that._

He shook his head. He understood her reasons. It wasn't her fault.

Nico had barely looked at Annabeth but he remembered her expression clearly too. It was if all the pieces had finally come together in her head, like he had pushed the last piece of the jigsaw into the puzzle. He had looked away after that. Annabeth was one of the demigods he admired the most. He didn't wasn't to hate her. But then again, he didn't want to hate himself either.

Nico's eyes betrayed him when they momentarily flashed to Percy. Nico didn't know what he had expected. Revulsion? Discomfort? Percy had just looked shocked. Not disgusted, not uncomfortable, just absolutely and utterly stunned. His green eyes were wide and his jaw was a little slack. Suddenly it all became too much. Percy's eyes almost boring a hole through his soul, Annabeth's calculating gaze, Jason's look of sympathy and Hazel's not quite judging golden eyes. _It was too much_. He didn't wait for anyone to move or anyone to say a word. The humiliation and shame had burst inside of him in a wild eruption of hurt and his knees had turned brittle, his throat had closed up and for once in his life, he had had _enough_.

Nico looked at his hands and found that they were shaking. He balled his fingers into fists but the effort to stop the shaking was futile. He had never felt so low in his life. The last few years he had been judged and abandoned and treated like trash and he wondered how it was only now that he actually felt like it. Maybe because these people were the closest thing to _friends _that he ever had. Maybe because he knew that if they didn't accept him, nobody ever would.

Eventually, he stopped thinking and just focused on the skyline rushing past beneath him. The ship had passed the ruins and was now flying above a grassy plain that was occasionally dotted with orchards or small farms. For a moment, he allowed his problems to feel insignificant compared to the vastness of the world flashing by underneath him. When his mind decided return to his forlornness, he found out that the pain had not diminished.

He was startled when he heard the door creak open. In a moment of panic, he searched for the nearest shadow before he remembered that the ship's fortifications prohibited shadow travel into and outside the ship. Cursing silently, he turned where he sat so that his back would face the door; the most subtle _go away_ he could manage.

The person did not abide by the silent message however, nor to the bitter "leave me alone" he threw at them. The figure stalked over to where he sat and it was only when the person took a seat beside him that he realized that it was Annabeth. Nico tried hard to suppress the grimace that immediately fell upon his face. He had thought it would be Hazel, running to comfort him or Jason trying to convince him to show his face again or even Piper, since she was probably an expert of these kind of situations but he had never imagined Annabeth would want to talk to him after hearing the revelation. He probably would have guessed Leo before he said Annabeth. He turned his head away from her, his face burning red in shame and embarrassment. How could she even bare to face him after what she had just found out?

"_Leave me alone._" he told Annabeth, putting emphasis on each syllable as if it could make her leave faster. To her credit, she didn't even move an inch nor did she look uncomfortable at the tone of his voice. His and Annabeth's exchanges had been limited to awkward 'hellos', battle strategy talks or more recently if he had any information regarding Percy's disappearance. He knew that she had always been vary of him after the trap he had sprung up on Percy. He had broken her trust this one time and he wasn't sure whether he was ever going to get it back. Annabeth hated not knowing things and Nico was a mystery that no one had ever been able to solve.

"Hey." she said, ignoring his venomous words.

"_Go away_." he said again, through clenched teeth. Why was she here anyway? To tell him to stay away?

She didn't budge which only annoyed him even more. Nico knew that Annabeth's life was far from perfect, that she'd had it worse than probably all of them but the fact didn't do anything to stop the ugly bubble of jealousy from spewing up in his stomach. Her life had been hell, was still hell from time to time but she had little things that Nico would kill for. She was a counselor at Camp, she had friends, she was respected, and she was _accepted_. The young demigods looked up to her in admiration and even older demigods idolized her while the only thing they did when they spotted him was fidget uncomfortably. And she had _him_. Sitting beside Nico, he couldn't help but feel as if she was rubbing her life in his face.

"I'm not leaving, Nico." she said. "Don't waste your breath."

"What do you want?" he snapped, still not being able to look at her face. He didn't think that he'd ever be able to look Annabeth in the eye again.

"I wanted to…talk." she said, slowly as if tasting the words on her tongue. She was quiet for a moment before she said, "It's… it's alright with the crew, Nico." She wasn't looking at his face either but looking downwards, trailing a finger on the dust covered floor in the shape of an owl.

Nico listened to what she had just said. His throat started to burn again. "But it's not alright with you?" he asked, snappishly. He heard the venom that laced his own words and wondered when had he turned so sadistic.

She hastened to retrace her words. "No! No, it's completely fine with me." she said hastily before adding, "I was just surprised, Nico." She paused. "Everyone was."

Nico wondered whether she was lying. He thought it was pretty obvious that she'd have a problem with him having a crush on her boyfriend. If Nico was in her place, he'd have a problem with it too. He kept quiet, silently letting her know that her efforts on a real conversation were going to fail eventually.

"It's fine with Percy too, you know?" she whispered after an elongated silence.

Her words rang in his ears, the name echoing back and forth in his brain. _It's fine with Percy too_. He wanted to laugh; he wanted to scream; he wanted to cry. He wished that it wasn't alright with Percy. He wished that Percy wasn't so heroic, so loyal, so_ everything_. He wished that for once in his life, Percy could be the bad guy just so Nico could hate him. Just for once.

"And he told you that?" Nico asked Annabeth, letting out a harsh laugh.

Annabeth shook her head. "I could tell from his face." she informed him. "You could've too… if you had stayed."

He didn't reply again, so Annabeth took it as her queue to continue the doomed conversation. "If it's any consolation, I know what you feel like." she said with a slight shrug of her shoulder.

He snorted loudly in reply. _As if._

"Well, I kind of am an expert on abandonment, you know?" she said, still in the light, nonchalant voice she was using previously. She pretended like she hadn't heard his sarcastic snort. "And, well, I know what falling for Percy feels like."

Nico's face burned again and he tried desperately to melt into the shadows. At that moment he rather have the glass doors slide open beneath him and fall to his death rather than face this conversation. He hated Annabeth for bringing it up. They both may have that in common but that was also where the difference arose. The knowledge that he would never be able to get what he wanted, the knowledge that what he wanted was rightfully Annabeth's. It was something that smacked him in the face every day.

Suddenly, Nico didn't know what happened. His resolve crumbled to ashes in front of his feet. His shoulders dropped. It felt like he had stepped into Tartarus once more, like his life had been seeped out of his very bones, like he had lost the will to struggle on. He remembered the words he had said to Jason. _I'll fulfill my promise and then I'll leave._ _Forever. _He wished he hadn't come back when they needed him. He wished that he had abided by his words and had left. He wished that this pain and neglect wasn't his to bear. Not for the first time in his life, Nico wished that he was _normal_.

"I didn't mean for it to happen." he told Annabeth in a crumbling voice. The lodge in his throat had reappeared. His vision blurred. "I swear to all the gods, I didn't mean…"

He tore off unable to continue with the stream of the sentence. He wondered how Annabeth was looking at him. He and Annabeth had never been close but at a time she had been one of heroes he had looked up to and the thought of her looking at him with judgment was enough to make his stomach twist.

"I know you didn't." Annabeth replied, quietly. Nico felt her grey eyes fall on him; he was sure that this was the first time she was actually looking at his face. Hesitantly, she put a gentle hand on his elbow and offered him a comforting squeeze. He tried hard not to flinch away from her touch. "The world works in strange ways." She let out a small laugh, much like his earlier one. "The gods work in strange ways."

He nodded silently, keeping his head down, too ashamed to show his glistening eyes. He suddenly understood why Annabeth was the one that came to him. Their story _was_ a little similar, wasn't it? Abandoned by the only family they ever had. Annabeth ran away, only to meet Thalia and Luke who both left her in different ways. Nico, himself, had never remembered his mother and Bianca had left him to join the hunters where she eventually met her demise. Both of them were saved by one black-haired, green-eyed boy. Annabeth, figuratively and he, literally.

"But we're demigods, right?" Annabeth said, as if suddenly remembering the reason she came here was to cheer him up instead of sharing in his grief. "We're all the odd ones out."

Nico was instantly and strangely ticked off by her statement. She was an odd one out too but in a good sense. Like the heroes who faced the Earth once every few millennia. She wasn't odd. She was _special_.

"Yeah," he said, resentfully. "But I'm the odd one out amongst _all _the odd one outs. I'm a freak amidst the people I'm supposed to fit in."

Nico felt bizarrely light as he said the statement. It was like he had been caging it inside of him for such a long while and it finally felt good to vent off, without the fear of being judged. He knew that Annabeth wouldn't hold anything he said against him and the knowledge was a little reassuring.

"Have you ever tried, Nico?" Annabeth asked him in return. Her tone was even but her painfully grey eyes were inspecting him indignantly. "Have you ever tried to fit in?"

Nico's answer lodged itself in his throat. He was about to say _yes_, before he stopped himself abruptly and thought hard. As much as he hated to admit it, he knew that she was right. Nico hadn't stayed at one camp for more than two weeks straight. He wasn't good with people; he didn't make friends easily. It had always hurt him to stand in the corner and observe as everybody else joked and laughed and hung out. Eventually, without really trying, he would leave and roam around somewhere else before venturing to the Underworld. Nico was better with the dead, like Leo was better with machines.

"It's not like it's my fault." he told Annabeth, sourly. He started to trail his own fingers in the dust making random patterns that made no sense. "People _flinch_ when they come near me, Annabeth. What am I supposed to do?"

Her answer was almost immediate, like he was stupid for not knowing. "Get them to become used to your presence." she informed him. She said the words like the fact should've been the easiest solution in the world.

He stayed silent and Annabeth continued her analysis. "You know when you get a new scar?" she questioned. He nodded, although he had no idea where the conversation was going. "At first glance, it's hard to look at it and you feel sick but eventually you have to look at it anyway. You force yourself to look and the second time around it doesn't look too horrible and then you just get used to it and the day comes when its presence simply doesn't bother you anymore."

Her words spun around in Nico's head; he immediately understood the meaning behind her comparison. She was quiet for a moment before she continued in a soft voice. "People are like that, Nico." Her eyes were on him again and for the first time since her arrival he found the courage to meet them. "You just gotta give them some time."

"Not everyone." he responded. He abandoned the incoherent patterns he had created on the dust covered floor and started twisting his skull ring around his finger. "Not everyone's like that."

"Who needs everyone?" she asked, bumping a shoulder against his, her tone turning playful. "You got us, you know? Me, Hazel, Piper, the boys… including Percy."

Nico hid his head again at the mention of the name. Suddenly, he felt painfully aware of Annabeth's eyes on him. When he spoke, he wasn't sure that his voice was even loud enough to reach her ears but he knew that she heard him nevertheless.

"Aren't you mad?" he asked. His voice was hoarse. The mortification was palpable in his words. "Shouldn't you be like, mad at me for…you know…"

"No, obviously not." she answered, without skipping a beat. Suddenly, out of the bloom, she grinned. "I learnt_ that _lesson from Rachel Elizabeth Dare."

He couldn't help the small smile that crossed his face. The action was so painstakingly alien to him; he didn't even remember the last time he had smiled. Annabeth's eyes held a glint of satisfaction when they saw his face. Nico would never admit it but it actually felt good, _smiling_.

For a moment, they both sat in companionable silence as Nico ran the conversation through his mind. Some of Annabeth's advice had decided to imprint itself in his head. He realized that it was time that he stopped running away. It had been something he had been doing since the death of his sister but that was where the problem arose; he didn't know how _not _to run away. He wouldn't suddenly become normal. People wouldn't suddenly start accepting him. Percy wasn't suddenly going to vanish from Camp- not a second time anyway.

"You'll get over him." Annabeth broke the silence, as if she was reading his mind.

A bubble of anger rose up inside of Nico. That was what he had been trying to do for _so_ long. Apparently, it wasn't working.

"How can you say that? he asked, heatedly. "What makes you so sure?"

Annabeth thought about his question, in what everybody on the Argo had name as 'her thinking face'. Her brows furrowed slightly, a little crease appeared on her forehead and her eyes turned a shade brighter. Finally she decided to speak.

"I think I understand where this is coming from, you know?" she said, her eyebrows still set in a little frown.

"Oh, yeah?"

"He was the first person to give a damn about you after Bianca." she informed him, as if she was telling him her own life story instead of narrating his. "He's the kind of person that you can't help but look up to. It's easy to fall for someone you admire."

Nico's ears were burning red. He had never blushed this much his entire life. In fact, Nico had _never _blushed before. _Period_. But even if he hated to, he had to admit that Annabeth's reasoning was completely spot on. Percy had been the first person who had remotely given a damn about him after Bianca had joined the hunters. At that time Nico had been so small, he had seem the world from a different perspective, from a different set of eyes. People had seemed good then, the Earth had seemed like a nice place. And Percy had been everything he imagined a hero to be. With a gleaming bronze sword, slaying monsters left and right and taking him to Camp- the one place where he was supposed to be safe. He had idolized Percy. He had wanted to be like him in the future. Nico just didn't know when his hero-worship had turned into a crush.

"I'm not saying you're just going to forget about him in an instant." Annabeth continued, not needing an answer from him. Absently, she started to twirl a blonde curl around her finger. "It's going to take time but…yeah. It'll be okay."

_It'll be okay_. Her words washed over his head in such a calming way, he actually wondered if Annabeth had found a way to borrow some of Piper's charmspeak. He genuinely started to believe in what she had just said. He realized that this was the first _real_ conversation that he had had with Annabeth and he had to admit that talking to her felt nice. He still felt angry and bitter and just completely _mad_ at the world but it felt good knowing that there was someone who understood his resentment. Maybe Annabeth wasn't the best person to tell him that he would get over his crush –she hadn't exactly gotten over it herself- but she had said it in such a convincing and un-judgmental way that it was hard not to believe her.

"Yeah." he agreed with her in a small voice. "It'll be okay."

* * *

_What doesn't kill you makes you stronger_

_Stand a little taller_

_Doesn't mean I'm lonely if I'm alone_

* * *

**My little tribute to Nico :)**

**Hope you liked it! The review button is not too far away! c:**

**-EG xoxoxo**


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